The World of Cork O'Connor Read online

  The old Indian hung spread-eagled between two small birch trees, secured to the slender trunks by nylon cords bound about his wrists and ankles. He was naked, although the night was cool and damp enough to make his blood steam as it flowed down his skin over the washboard of his ribs. Behind him, darkness closed like a black curtain over the rest of the deep woods. The campfire lit the old man as if he were a single actor in a command performance.

  Or, Milwaukee thought as he approached with the burning stick, a puppet who’d broken his strings.

  Milwaukee grasped the long gray hair and lifted the old man’s head. The eyes flickered open. Dark almond eyes. Resigned but not broken.

  “See.” Milwaukee brought the angry glow inches from his face. “Your eyes will bubble. Just like stew. First one, then the other.”

  The almond eyes looked steadily at Milwaukee, as if there were not at all a flame between them.

  “Just tell us how to get to the woman and I won’t hurt you anymore,” Milwaukee offered. Although he meant it, he’d have been disappointed in the Indian if he broke; for he felt a rare companionship with the old man that had nothing to do with the business between them but was something in their spirits, something indomitable, something the nervous man by the fire would never understand. Milwaukee knew about the old man, knew how he was strong deep down, knew the information they were after would never come from him. In the end, the living would still be ignorant and the important answers, as always, would reside with the dead.

  The second man at the campfire spoke. “Gone soft?” He was a huge man with a shaved head. He lit a fat Cuban cigar with a stick much like Milwaukee held, and he smiled. He smiled because next to himself, Milwaukee was the hardest man he knew. And like Milwaukee, he tolerated the nervous man only because of the money.

  “Go on,” the nervous man commanded. “Do it, for Christ’s sake. I’ve got to know where she is.”

  Milwaukee looked deeply into the eyes of the old man, into his soul, and wordlessly, he spoke. Then he tipped the stick. The reflection of the fire filled the old man’s right eye.

  The old man did not blink.

  Published 2001

  * * *

  Cork O’Connor finds himself caught in the middle of deadly hostilities between the Iron Lake Ojibwe and powerful lumber interests intent on logging a forest area sacred to the Ojibwe. The battle becomes personal when Cork’s wife, Jo, and son, Stephen, are kidnapped. A story inspired by true events.

  * * *

  CHARACTERS INTRODUCED

  JOHN LEPERE: A man of Native blood, bent on revenge.

  GRACE FITZGERALD: A well-respected author and heir to the Fitzgerald shipping fortune.

  SCOTT FITZGERALD: Grace’s young son, an asthmatic kid.

  KARL LINDSTROM: Husband to Grace Fitzgerald, and the last of the Lindstrom family, once one of the great lumbering families in North America.

  ISAIAH BROOM: Member of the Iron Lake Ojibwe and a Native activist.

  AN EXCERPT FROM PURGATORY RIDGE

  Corcoran O’Connor was pulled instantly from his sleep by the sound of a sniffle near his head. He opened his eyes and the face of his six-year-old son filled his vision.

  “I’m thcared,” Stevie said.

  Cork propped himself on one arm. “Of what, buddy?”

  “I heard thomething.”

  “Where? In your room?”

  Stevie nodded.

  “Let’s go see.”

  Jo rolled over. “What is it?”

  “Stevie heard something,” Cork told his wife. “I’ll take care of it. Go back to sleep.”

  “What time is it?”

  Cork glanced at the radio alarm on the stand beside the bed. “Five o’clock.”

  “I can take him,” she offered.

  “Go back to sleep.”

  “Mmmm.” She smiled faintly and rolled back to her dreaming.

  Cork took his son by the hand, and together they walked down the hallway to where the night-light in Stevie’s room cast a soft glow over everything.

  “Where was the noise?”

  Stevie pointed toward the window.

  “Let’s see.”

  Cork knelt and peered through the screen. Aurora, Minnesota, was defined by the barest hint of morning light. The air was quite still, not even the slightest rustle among the leaves of the elm in Cork’s backyard. Far down the street, the Burnetts’ dog, Bogart, barked a few times, then fell silent. The only thing Cork found disturbing was the smell of wood smoke heavy on the breeze. The smoke came from forest fires burning all over the north country. Summer had come early that year. With it had come a dry heat and drought that wilted the undergrowth and turned fields of wild grass into something to be feared. Lake levels dropped to the lowest recorded in nearly a century. Rivers shrank to ragged threads. Creeks ceased to run. In shallow pools of trapped water, fish darted about wildly as what sustained them rapidly disappeared. The fires had begun in mid-June. Now it was nearly the end of July, and still the forests were burning. One blaze would be controlled and two others somewhere else would ignite. Day and night, the sky was full of smoke and the smell of burned wood.

  “Do you still hear it?” Cork asked.

  Stevie, who’d knelt beside him, shook his head.

  “Probably an early bird,” Cork said.

  “After a worm.” Stevie smiled.

  “Yeah. And he must’ve got that worm. Think you can go back to sleep?”

  “Yeth.”

  “Good man. Come on.”

  Cork got him settled in bed, then sat in a chair near the window. Stevie watched his father a while. His eyes were dark brown, the eyes of his Anishinaabe ancestors. Slowly, they drifted closed.

  Cork’s son had always been a light sleeper, awakened easily by noises in the night, disturbances in the routine of the household. He was the only one of the O’Connor children who’d needed the comfort of a night-light. Cork blamed himself. In Stevie’s early years, when the dark of his closet or under his bed first became vast and menacing, Cork wasn’t always there to stand between his son and the monsters of his imagination. There were times, he knew, when the monster was real and was Cork. He thought often these days of the words that ended the traditional marriage ceremony of the Anishinaabeg.

  You will share the same fire.

  You will hang your garments together.

  You will help one another.

  You will walk the same trail.

  You will look after one another.

  Be kind to one another.

  Be kind to your children.

  He hadn’t always been careful to abide by these simple instructions. But a man could change, and watching his son crawl back into his dreaming, Cork vowed—as he did almost every morning—to work at being a better man.

  By the time Cork finally left Stevie to his dreaming, morning sunlight fired the curtains over the window at the end of the hallway. Cork thought of returning to bed for a little while, but chose instead to head to the bathroom, where he showered, shaved, splashed on aftershave, then looked himself over carefully in the bathroom mirror.

  • • •

  Corcoran Liam O’Connor was forty-seven years old. Part Irish, part Ojibwe Anishinaabe, he stood five feet eleven inches tall, weighed one hundred seventy-five pounds, and had brown eyes, thinning red-brown hair, and slightly crooked teeth. He suffered from mild rosacea that he treated with prescription ointment. In wet weather, his left shoulder—twice dislocated—was prone to an arthritic aching. He did not consider himself a handsome man, but there were those, apparently, who found him so. All in all, what stared back at him from the bathroom mirror was the face of a man who’d struggled to be happy and believed himself to be almost there.

  He returned to his bedroom, a towel about his waist. The radio alarm had gone off and WIRR out of Buhl was playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Cork went to the dresser, pulled open a drawer, and took out a pair of black silk boxers.

  Jo stirred. She took a deep breath
but kept her eyes closed. When she spoke to him, the words seemed to come reluctantly and from a distant place.

  “Stevie all right?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Another fire’s started. Up in the Boundary Waters near Saganaga Lake.” She yawned. “I just heard it on the news.”

  “Oh?”

  “Get this. The guy who started it is a lobbyist for the tobacco industry. He was shooting off fireworks. In the Boundary Waters—can you believe it?”

  “I hope they fine his ass big time,” Cork said.

  “He’s a tobacco lawyer. He can pay from his pocket money.” The room was quiet. Bogart started barking again down the block. “I can feel you watching me.”

  “What else?”

  “I smell Old Spice.”

  “Anything else?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say you’ve put on your black silk boxers.”

  “What a detective you would have made.” He sat on the bed, leaned down, and kissed her shoulder.

  “I was dreaming before the radio came on.” She rolled toward him and opened her eyes.

  “What?”

  “We were trying to fly, you and I. A plane we had to pedal. But somehow we couldn’t quite get it off the ground.”

  Cork reached out and brushed a white-blond strand of hair from her cheek.

  She reached up and drifted her hand down his chest. “You smell good.”

  “Only Old Spice. You have pedestrian tastes.”

  “And, my, aren’t you lucky.”

  He bent to her lips. She let him kiss her but kept her mouth closed. “I’m all stale. Give me five minutes.” She slid from the bed. She wore a gray tank top and white cotton underwear, her usual sleep attire. “Don’t start anything without me.” She smiled coyly as she went out the door.

  Cork drew back the covers, straightened the bottom sheet, fluffed the pillows, and lay down to wait. The bedroom window was open. Bogart had ceased his barking and the only sound now was the call of a mourning dove perched in the big maple in the front yard. Aurora, Minnesota, deep in the great North Woods, riding the jagged edge of the Iron Range, had not yet wakened. This was Cork’s favorite time of day. Although he couldn’t actually see it, he could picture the whole town perfectly. Sunlight dripping down the houses on Gooseberry Lane like butter melting down pancakes. The streets empty and clean. The surface of Iron Lake on such a still morning looking solid as polished steel.

  God, he loved this place.

  And he’d begun to love again, too, the woman who now stood in the doorway with a gold towel wrapped about her and tucked at her breasts. Her hair was wet. Her pale blue eyes were wide awake and interested. She locked the door behind her.

  “We don’t have much time,” she said in a whisper. “I think I heard Stevie stirring.”

  “We’re the experts at putting a lot into a little time.”

  He smiled wide, and widely he opened his arms.

  An explosion kept them from beginning anything. The house shook; the windows rattled; the mourning dove fell silent, frightened to stillness or frightened away.

  “My God,” Cork said. “What was that?”

  Jo looked at him, her eyes blue and shiny. “I think the earth moved. Without us.” She glanced at the window. “Sonic boom?”

  “When was the last time you heard a sonic boom around here?”

  From the hallway beyond the bedroom door came the sound of voices, then a knock.

  “Jo? Cork?”

  “Just a minute, Rose.” She blew Cork a kiss. “Rain check.” She headed to the closet and grabbed a robe from the door hook.

  Cork quickly exchanged his silk boxers for a pair of jogging shorts and went to the window. He stared north over the roofs of Aurora where a column of smoke rose thick and black somewhere beyond the town limits. Just above the ground, the air was calm and the smoke climbed straight up four or five hundred feet until it hit a high current that spread it east over Iron Lake. The sky was a milky blue from the haze of the distant forest fires. Against it, the smoke from the nearer burn was dark as crude oil.

  At his back, Cork heard the door unlock. Rose stepped in, Stevie at her heels.

  “Whatever that was, it didn’t sound good.” Rose tugged her beige chenille robe tight about her broad waist and stuffed her plump, freckled hands into the pockets. She was Jo’s sister and for more than fifteen years had been part of the O’Connor household.

  Stevie ran to his father. “Thomething blew up.”

  “I think something did, buddy.” Cork put his arm around his son and motioned the others to the window, where they huddled and stared at the huge smoke cloud fanning out above the lake.

  The siren on Aurora’s only fire station began to wail, calling the volunteers to duty.

  “See the direction that smoke’s coming from?” He glanced at Jo. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  From the concern on her face, it was clear to him that she was. She straightened and turned from the window. “I’d better go.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Cork started toward the dresser to get his clothes.

  “Cork.” Jo put a hand on his arm to restrain him gently. “I have clients to protect. I need to be out there. But there’s no reason for you to go. You’re not the sheriff anymore.” She seemed reluctant to add that last bit of a reminder, as if she were afraid that even after all this time, it still might hurt him.

  He smiled gamely and said, “Then let’s just chalk it up to morbid curiosity.”

  Published 2004

  * * *

  When Solemn Winter Moon is accused of murdering a white woman, Cork O’Connor sets out to prove the young Ojibwe’s innocence. This quest quickly becomes a convoluted spiritual journey that leads him on an investigation of a girl twice dead. One of my favorites in the series.

  * * *

  CHARACTERS INTRODUCED

  SOLEMN WINTER MOON: A troubled Ojibwe youth, accused of murdering a white girl.

  DOROTHY WINTER MOON: Solemn’s long-suffering mother.

  FLETCHER KANE: A wealthy physician and father of the murdered girl.

  GLORIA KANE: Fletcher’s sister.

  FATHER MAL THORNE: A sympathetic priest, too fond of alcohol, and on the edge of losing his faith.

  ARNE SODERBERG: The new sheriff of Tamarack County, a man better suited to politics than to law enforcement.

  RANDY GOODING: A Tamarack County sheriff’s deputy and staunch Catholic.

  AN EXCERPT FROM BLOOD HOLLOW

  January, as usual, was meat locker cold, and the girl had already been missing for nearly two days. Corcoran O’Connor couldn’t ignore the first circumstance. The second he tried not to think about.

  He stood in snow up to his ass, more than two feet of drifted powder blinding white in the afternoon sun. He lifted his tinted goggles and glanced at the sky, a blue ceiling held up by green walls of pine. He stood on a ridge that overlooked a small oval of ice called Needle Lake, five miles from the nearest maintained road. Aside from the track his snowmobile had pressed into the powder, there was no sign of human life. A rugged vista lay before him—an uplifted ridge, a jagged shoreline, a bare granite pinnacle that jutted from the ice and gave the lake its name—but the recent snowfall had softened the look of the land. In his time, Cork had seen nearly fifty winters come and go. Sometimes the snow fell softly, sometimes it came in a rage. Always it changed the face of whatever it touched. Cork couldn’t help thinking that in this respect, snow was a little like death. Except that death, when it changed a thing, changed it forever.

  He took off his mittens, deerskin lined with fleece. He turned back to the Polaris snowmobile that Search and Rescue had provided for him, and he pulled a radio transmitter from the compartment behind the seat. When he spoke through the mouth hole of his ski mask, his words ghosted against the radio in a cloud of white vapor.

  “Unit Three to base. Over.”

  “This is base. Go ahead, Cork.”

  “I’
m at Needle Lake. No sign of her. I’m going to head up to Hat Lake. That’ll finish this section.”

  “I copy that. Have you seen Bledsoe?”

  “That’s a negative.”

  “He completed the North Arm trail and was going to swing over to give you a hand. Also, be advised that the National Weather Service has issued a severe weather warning. A blizzard’s coming our way. Sheriff’s thinking of pulling everybody in.”

  Cork O’Connor had lived in the Northwoods of Minnesota most of his life. Although at the moment there was only a dark cloud bank building in the western sky, he knew that in no time at all the weather could turn.

  “Ten-four, Patsy. I’ll stay in touch. Unit Three out.”

  He’d been out since first light, and despite the deerskin mittens, the Sorel boots and thick socks, the quilted snowmobile suit, the down parka, and the ski mask, he was cold to the bone. He put the radio back, lifted a thermos from the compartment under the seat of the Polaris, and poured a cup of coffee. It was only lukewarm, but it felt great going down his throat. As he sipped, he heard the sound of another machine cutting through the pines to his right. In a minute, a snowmobile broke through a gap in the trees, and shot onto the trail where Cork’s own machine sat idle. Oliver Bledsoe buzzed up beside Cork and killed the engine. He dismounted and pulled off his ski mask.

  “Heard you on the radio with Patsy,” Bledsoe said. “Knew I’d catch you here.” He cast a longing look at Cork’s coffee. “Got any left?”

  “Couple swallows,” Cork said. He poured the last of the coffee into the cup and offered it to Bledsoe. “All yours.”

  “Thanks.”

  Bledsoe was true-blood Iron Lake Ojibwe. He was large, muscular, a hair past fifty, with a wide, honest face and warm almond eyes. Although he was now an attorney and headed the legal affairs office for the tribal council, in his early years he’d worked as a logger and he knew this area well. Cork was glad to have him there.